p9x79e-ws Migrating OS from single SSD boot drive to Singel HDD bootdrive...

[Martin Moesby]

I have an issue I cannot seem to finde any information about with my elderly, but rock-solid and dust-free P9X79E-WS board:

 

There are a total of 5 storage devices: 2 SSD's SATA6 and 3 HDDs SATA6. the SSD's are connected to the 2 grey-sataports and the HDDS are connected to the blue SATA-ports (not sure what significance this has, but now it's out there...)

 

My plan was to migrate the OS to the HDD, create the SSD raid0  in BIOS, BOOT from the migrated OS  and then migrate the OS back to the newly created RAID-volume...

(I am using "AOMEI Partition Assistant" to do this (v 8.6)...)

 

After migrating OS to a non-raided HDD from a non-raided SDD I ran into the these issues:

 

1) I cannot get the HDD set automatically into the boot-sequence - I have to manually select the HDD to boot from.

2) After setting the SATA mode to RAID, and then selecting the HDD drive as boot drive, the system boot is haltet with a stopcode :INVALID BOOT SEQUENCE (or something like that)

this occurs regardles if I have created a raid0 volume (using CTRL-I) or not...

3) If I after having created the RAID0, set the SATA mode to ACHI and then selects the HDD to boot from, the system boots and the RAID-volume is found in windows...I can create a partition on that volume, but wil it actually work as a RAID volume, even if SATA mode is set to ACHI?

4) I cannot migrate the OS back to the raid-volume

This seemed like a good plan, but now I am not to sure....

 

Does anyone know something that could help me in migrating the OS back to the RAID0 volume (in BIOS Boot sequence this is shown as "INTEL OS" - the OS part is the name I gave the Volume upon creation)?

 

 

Kind regards from DK

 

Martin Moesby

 

 

[Kilrah]

1) Normal

2) You can't switch AHCI to RAID directly, Windows won't load the correct drivers. You need to do a safe mode boot trick to get Windows to change the drivers it loads on boot:

https://blog.workinghardinit.work/2018/11/28/moving-from-ahci-to-raid/

• Switch to safe boot
• Reboot into BIOS
• Change from AHCI to RAID in the BIOS
• Boot into safe mode
• Turn off safe mode and reboot normally again

Once you've done that you'll be able to have your working RAID and migrate to it. 

[Master Disaster]

I'm flying blind here but if I had to guess I'd say your issues stem from the bootloader.

 

On a single drive Volume the bootloader is stored on the drive, if its MBR then its stored on the first 512k of the drive which is always reserved as a boot sector, if its GPT then its stored in a 100mb FAT32 partition at the beginning of the drive.

 

What I suspect is the dual partition setup of a RAID is causing the bootloader and/or Windows itself to panic since its boot store records show that it should be installed on a single partition.

 

Assuming Windows is installed in UEFI mode on a GPT volume its possible to delete the existing boot store and rebuild it to match the current setup.

 

I STRONGLY recommend you unplug all other drives except the ones your working with before messing around with bootrec.

 

http://woshub.com/how-to-repair-uefi-bootloader-in-windows-8/

 

Even after that though you might still run into issues if Windows doesn't have RAID drivers for your system in its driver database.

 

As I said though, I'm guessing here, my experience with managing RAIDs is pretty minimal so I wouldn't blame you if you ignored my advice entirely, its possible i'm totally wrong and you might end up losing your data.

[Longsh07]

I'm not familiar with the board myself but your mention of the port colour jumped out at me so I had a quick look at the manual as I know my board (ROG Maximus VII Gene) has a couple of ports that can only be used for data drives and not OS.

 

Manual for your board suggests you have the following SATA ports from top to bottom:

• 2x Grey controlled by X79 chipset (SATA6G_1 and SATA6G_2)
• 4x Blue controlled by X79 chipset (SATA6G_3, SATA6G_4, SATA6G_5, SATA6G_6)
• 4x Grey controlled by a Marvell SATS chip (SATA6G_E1, SATA6G_E2, SATA6G_E3, SATA6G_E4)

I assume your SSD's are connected to the top two grey SATA ports? Fact its named 'INTEL OS' suggests they are but wanted to confirm.

[Martin Moesby]

3 minutes ago, Longsh07 said:

I'm not familiar with the board myself but your mention of the port colour jumped out at me so I had a quick look at the manual as I know my board (ROG Maximus VII Gene) has a couple of ports that can only be used for data drives and not OS.

 

Manual for your board suggests you have the following SATA ports from top to bottom:

• 2x Grey controlled by X79 chipset (SATA6G_1 and SATA6G_2)
• 4x Blue controlled by X79 chipset (SATA6G_3, SATA6G_4, SATA6G_5, SATA6G_6)
• 4x Grey controlled by a Marvell SATS chip (SATA6G_E1, SATA6G_E2, SATA6G_E3, SATA6G_E4)

I assume your SSD's are connected to the top two grey SATA ports? Fact its named 'INTEL OS' suggests they are but wanted to confirm.

Yes, I am using the 2 top grey ones - there are no drives connected to the Marvell controller...

 

[Martin Moesby]

50 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

1) Normal

2) You can't switch AHCI to RAID directly, Windows won't load the correct drivers. You need to do a safe mode boot trick to get Windows to change the drivers it loads on boot:

https://blog.workinghardinit.work/2018/11/28/moving-from-ahci-to-raid/

• Switch to safe boot
• Reboot into BIOS
• Change from AHCI to RAID in the BIOS
• Boot into safe mode
• Turn off safe mode and reboot normally again

Once you've done that you'll be able to have your working RAID and migrate to it. 

Thanh you for the description and the links - but I an a little puzzled - should I "only" do the 5 steps you have mentioned here, og should I also do all the regedit stuff?

 

 

[Kilrah]

Just the 5 steps, the registry is an alternate method but there's no point bothering with it.

 

Also forgot to mention one thing - If you have the intel SATA controller in RAID mode and a RAID0 set up, DO NOT switch it back to AHCI. There is a long standing bug where if you do so and get to the "ctrl-I" screen your RAID is dead. Good to keep in mind if you accidentally clear CMOS and it sets itself to AHCI by default - when you get to the BIOS to reconfigure don't forget to change to RAID before the first boot attempt. 

[Martin Moesby]

2 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Just the 5 steps, the registry is an alternate method but there's no point bothering with it.

 

Also forgot to mention one thing - If you have the intel SATA controller in RAID mode and a RAID0 set up, DO NOT switch it back to AHCI. There is a long standing bug where if you do so and get to the "ctrl-I" screen your RAID is dead. Good to keep in mind if you accidentally clear CMOS and it sets itself to AHCI by default - when you get to the BIOS to reconfigure don't forget to change to AHCI before the first boot attempt. 

Do you mean, that if I somehow need to clear CMOS, I should set the SATA mode to RAID before first boot? or set it to AHCI before first boot?

...and thank you again, I'll try this, as soon as my Backup is finished


 

[Kilrah]

34 minutes ago, Martin Moesby said:

I should set the SATA mode to RAID before first boot?

This. Corrected post above.

[Martin Moesby]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

1) Normal

2) You can't switch AHCI to RAID directly, Windows won't load the correct drivers. You need to do a safe mode boot trick to get Windows to change the drivers it loads on boot:

https://blog.workinghardinit.work/2018/11/28/moving-from-ahci-to-raid/

• Switch to safe boot
• Reboot into BIOS
• Change from AHCI to RAID in the BIOS
• Boot into safe mode
• Turn off safe mode and reboot normally again

Once you've done that you'll be able to have your working RAID and migrate to it. 

This worked like a charm  Thx. Wil now try to migrate OS to the RAID volume